AI Research Scientist: Multimodal Foundation Models - Architecture, Pre-Training & Distillation
Apple· Machine Learning and AI
Hybrid (Sunnyvale, California), Hybrid (Seattle, Washington)$150.4k - $277.6kfull-timePosted 3mo ago
About the role
Research scientist role focused on architectures, pre-training methods, and distillation techniques for multimodal foundation models optimized for on-device deployment within Apple’s ecosystem. Involves designing novel architectures, pre-training objectives, data strategies, and teacher–student distillation pipelines, with emphasis on memory, latency, energy, and privacy constraints for Apple silicon. Potential publications and open-source contributions where appropriate.
Responsibilities
- Hands-on experience designing, implementing, and running large-scale pre-training experiments for large language models.
- Experience with LLM pre-training topics such as model architecture, training objectives, data mixtures, tokenization, curricula, scaling, and optimization.
- Strong proficiency with modern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX and distributed training systems.
- Experience evaluating pre-trained models across language understanding, reasoning, instruction following, or multimodal capabilities.
- Strong understanding of transformer-based architectures and current approaches to efficient or scalable foundation-model training.
- Master’s degree, or equivalent practical experience in machine learning, computer science, or a related technical field.
Qualifications
- Hands-on experience designing, implementing, and running large-scale pre-training experiments for large language models.
- Experience with LLM pre-training topics such as model architecture, training objectives, data mixtures, tokenization, curricula, scaling, and optimization.
- Strong proficiency with modern deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX and distributed training systems.
- Experience evaluating pre-trained models across language understanding, reasoning, instruction following, or multimodal capabilities.
- Strong understanding of transformer-based architectures and current approaches to efficient or scalable foundation-model training.
- Master’s degree, or equivalent practical experience in machine learning, computer science, or a related technical field.
- Experience contributing to major foundation-model pre-training efforts or leading architecture experiments that influenced a large training run.
- Research contributions in model architecture, scaling laws, multimodal pre-training, optimization, efficient attention, mixture-of-experts, state-space models, or related areas.
- Experience with knowledge distillation, including offline or off-policy distillation, on-policy distillation, self-distillation, sequence-level distillation, logic matching, or representation transfer.
- Experience designing teacher–student training pipelines or transferring capabilities from large foundation models to smaller models.
- Experience with multimodal models spanning language, vision, video, audio, or other sensor modalities.
- Understanding of inference efficiency, memory hierarchy, hardware accelerators, or hardware–software co-design.
- Strong publication record, influential open-source contributions, or an equivalent record of applied research impact.
Skills
Required:Large-language-model (LLM) pre-trainingModel architectureDistillationMultimodal learningOn-device AI / Apple siliconTransformer architecturesProgramming frameworks
Benefits
- Comprehensive medical and dental coverage
- retirement benefits
- discounted products and free services
- reimbursement for certain educational expenses including tuition
- potential discretionary bonuses or commission payments as well as relocation
- Apple shareholder opportunities via stock programs
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
Last updated Sep 4, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About Apple
Discover the innovative world of Apple and shop everything iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV, plus explore accessories, entertainment, and expert device support.
Discover the innovative world of Apple and shop everything iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV, plus explore accessories, entertainment, and expert device support.
AirPods Max 2Apple ArcadeApple CardApple Fitness+Apple MusicApple TVApple TV+Apple Watch Series 11
More open roles at Apple
- Senior UI Software Engineer, Cocoa2d agoCupertino, CA · Software and Services
- AIML - Machine Learning Engineer, Visual Intelligence Technology2d agoHybrid (Cupertino/Santa Clara/SSeattle area (3 work locations)) · Visual Intelligence Technology
- Physical Design Methodology CAD Engineer2d agoHybrid (Sunnyvale, California), Hybrid (Austin, Texas) +3 more · Hardware Technology CAD team / Silicon Technologies group
- Sr. ML Optimization Engineer, ASE Efficiency2d agoHybrid (San Diego, CA) · Software and Services
- Sr. ML Optimization Engineer, ASE Efficiency2d agoHybrid (Seattle, WA) · Software and Services